


If it aches in your heart

by Kynurenine



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-11-21 16:20:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18144548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kynurenine/pseuds/Kynurenine
Summary: Death is slacking on the job. She just wants more time.





	1. Chapter 1

Finding your way to her is easy. Having navigated the world of the living for as long as it's been alive, you learned to move purely by feeling.

 

Contrary to popular belief, you don't actually know exactly when people are going to die. Instead you feel some sort of insistent tug toward a soul that nears its expiry, and even then, sometimes it fades and people only witness a glimpse of your dark cloak before the thread that connects you returns to a slack. Almost is a more common concept to you now: countless souls have been in your grasp only to be pulled back by a stalwart doctor, a good friend, a fear, a lover. 

 

She's different, though. The tug is there, always leading to her general direction, like a vague little niggling in the back of your head telling you to go back, go back to her.

 

Perhaps it's a yearning. This is a foreign concept. Death does not have wants, or needs. Death only has a job.

 

You arrive at her bedside, when it is still dark and quiet save for her breaths: deep and rhythmic, stable, with a soft snore. Soft. Like her, now, looking so achingly soft with her bright purple hair splayed around her head like a neon halo, hands loosely around her favorite wolf plush with the blanket pulled up to her shoulders.

 

By human standards, you would be a complete creep watching the girl sleep like this. But then again, if you were human... perhaps you could act upon this yearning to sweep pretty purple locks from her face, maybe even run your finger down the slope of her nose and place a gentle kiss on a pale cheek. Perhaps... if you weren't employed to be the one to take her away to the afterlife. 

 

A cough interrupts your inner monologueing. It's hers, of course. Ever since you first felt that little compass in your being point her way, you've not quite heard her stop coughing in some measurable span of time. It's jarring, witnessing the violent upheaval of air from her lungs to her itching throat, how her body seems to reject the very thing that keeps it living. You have never been fazed by such things as sickness and gore before, of course, having seen much much worse, but she's the little spot of vivid color in your monochrome existence. How could you not flinch at the tightening in her lungs, the crimson on her hand, the red string of fate reeling you in and threatening to end the one thing that's ever been new and different to your monotony?

 

She wakes. You sigh, relieved. The other aspects of your being continue to do your job elsewhere but not here. Not here, not today.

 

"H-hye?"

 

Her voice is thick with sleep but soft all the same. The yearning creates a scene where you rise from sleep as well, and this is what you hear. You push it back, keep it in the box of impossibles. Tuck it away into a corner of your mind never to be touched again. 

 

"I'm here," you reply, meeting her own hand halfway. She is warm, although the bones in her wrist jut out as if to mock your ridiculous wishes for her to be well. A sleepy smile tugs up her lips, pale and somewhat blue. Another mockery.

 

"Is it today?"

 

You shake your head, smile as bright as you could make it, and clutch her hand a little bit tighter. "No, not today. I'd safely assume not tomorrow either, and I hope..." You trail off, hoping she understands. She does, of course, even chuckling at the irony of it all: how Death got a break from her job here, falling in love with a terminally ill girl named Yerim and her striking purple hair, and making impossible wishes akin to hitting the snooze button and promising to wake up to reality in "five more minutes." 

 

"I'm sorry Hyejoo. But I've already made peace with knowing I won't last for mu-" Another coughing fit interrupts the bedridden girl, and as you watch her pull her knees up to her chest as coughs wrack her frame... you cannot help but think that she looks much, much smaller than she should be.

 

Once the sickness ceases its chokehold on Yerim for the time being, she immediately breaks into a grin, though not without effort. It hurts you in places you thought did not exist. The middle of your chest tightens, perhaps not unlike the way hers does. So goes the tragic irony.

 

Yerim starts to rub little circles into your palm. "Don't be too sad now, It's almost morning! We don't want to start the day on sad thoughts!"

 

Even now, literally in the face of Death, the infectious brightness in her eyes, her voice, her smile... they remind you of the sun now carefully peeking over the horizon, through the curtained windows, and slowly washing the both of you in a soft glow.

 

(Even now, literally in the face of Death, with the sun bathing her in an angelic light, tragedy written across her face and smiling anyway... she's never looked more beautiful.)

 

"I'd like to draw you."

 

You blink, having been taken out of your inner monologue yet again. "Draw... me?"

 

"Yeah!" She laughs. You think it sounds like salvation. "Yeah, Hyejoo. You look pretty in the morning sun, scary black cloak and all. Did I ever tell you you look like my little wolfie Olivia over here? Her mouth is triangular, kinda like yours, and you both have a serious frown but you're both still so adorable... "

 

You reach for the drawer on the nightstand, knowing she keeps her sketchbook there all filled with drawings of mundane objects and the faces of her loved ones...soon to include you. The pinch in your chest returns, but it is a welcome pain. Your form stays corporeal for a while longer even as the urge to return to your job itches insistently.

 

Her fingers brush against your cold ones as you hand her the pencil and sketchbook, inciting a little blush on her cheeks. It's the prettiest instance of blood on her skin.

 

The sun is already halfway up the horizon as Yerim is, sitting up and starting to draw, frowning cutely at you when you move. Her wolf stands guard by her side, presumably forever, and you'd like to pretend you're doing the same. 


	2. That means that something is working

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death is really going through it. Fate is a cool boss.

Certainty. Like the rise and fall of tides, the wax and wane of the moon, the day in and day out as time progresses. Some things are certain, but they are not forever. Enter from stage left, Hyejoo.

Your wrists are bound in black thread, they drag you forward and Fate leads you on. You are Lucky, carrying forth the whims of your master: You think, you dance. Plodding along to the rhythm of empires and kings rising and falling beneath your feet. So the script says. Act I has passed. Now you fall to humanity's whims instead, to inevitable stupidity.

And what is love, if not the stupidest thing of all?

Yerim would have some words with you, were you a few hundred years younger and more likely to think of such things. "Love's not stupid!" She would exclaim, fist raised and lips in a pout. The girl would then proceed to try and dispel what you've identified as love from all the utterly idiotic things man has ever done in its name. And you would have believed her, even then. How could you not, when Yerim is your very own certainty, as if she is the very being who brings the sun to rise upon her waking.

Maybe so. Helios wished he could have brought warmth to Death the way the purple-haired girl does.

But here you are now. As certain as the dawn is comes the ineluctable dusk accompanied by your hand. Men would tremble at the sight of your twilight shroud, at the gradient of darkness that frames your ghostly grasp that signals the end of their part in this act, but Yerim does not. In fact she says she is comforted by your presence, that you, in turn, are her certainty, that perhaps it might have been too soon but that she wouldn't have it any other way.

From an outside view: a girl says she's glad that she's constantly treading the fine boundary between life and Death, because she gets to fall in love with Death herself, and that she would rather have this over what a firmly-planted foot in life could offer.

You tell her this, as she wheezes away on her bed, pulling the last hearty laugh you would hear from her.

"It s-sounds stupid yeah. Love..." A cough, and a sharp pain to your chest. "-makes y-you do stupid things."

Stupid things indeed. Like collecting your whole self here, leaving all the threads of expiring souls taut and uncut, putting the whims of Fate on hold for this one human girl who's taking pieces of you with her as she leaves, pieces you never knew were there to begin with.

Only her mother is here with her, holding Yerim's left hand tightly in both of hers. She does not weep, if only by sheer willpower, putting up a strong front for her daughter. Her mother knows of the approaching dusk, almost as much as you, as mothers with their infallible instincts towards their children do. Her front lasts only until the last of the sun's light ceases from the sky, as she breaks down and cries such horrid, ugly sobs and Yerim's eyes stay closed, chest unmoving. Forever.

You hold Yerim's soul in both hands reverently, the core of a worn-out star in the palms of the cosmos. The tug is gone. Your chest is hollow, and it aches as constantly as the sound of the flatline. Is this grief? Wishing you could cry like the woman before you whimpering out goodbyes as she is led away from the empty husk that looks like her daughter? You don't cry. You cannot, so the hollow aching meant for salty tears festers inside you instead, a boulder weighing on your torso and making it difficult to move, to do anything at all. But you look down on your hand and she is still there, and you have a job to do.

Blowing on the soul as if it were a dandelion, you make a wish for her passing: May she become radiant and glowing, powerful and strong, bold and brave and happy wherever she will be. The utterance barely makes it out of your mouth, a quiet "I love you," that holds your whole being as she fades from your hands. You do too, soon after.

A lady in red makes her way into your periphery before everything blacks out. You're tired, oh so damn tired...

"Oh my dear Hyejoo. Whatever will we do with you?"

  
...

  
You wake with the feeling of looseness, of being adrift. All the pulls on your being are gone, which is nice, albeit disorienting since you haven't felt like this in so long. The hollow ache in your chest seems to pound a tad bit harder as you are surrounded by a similar void. It takes you some time before you realize that you are back where you began, at the space between sky and sea, the frozen sliver of existence reserved for-

"Hello, Hyejoo."

-Her. Fate herself. The empty space you float in fully materializes into a large, icy room where the threads of the universe criss-cross and knot together in an incomprehensible mess. Perhaps it's not so much of a mess to the woman in red now in front of you, holding onto a black thread that crosses every other where most of them are cut. It is, without doubt, yours.

"Haseul."

She smiles kindly, the opposite of what she is perceived to be: Fate, cold and cruel as the winter that coats her liminal domain. Her fingers run gently down the length of your thread and you feel as mortal as you could be with the presence of silver scissors that hang loosely in her other hand.

"You've made quite the mess today, Hye. I had to leave and go pick up the souls you've left unattended by myself, you know," Haseul says, narrowing her eyes at the tangle beyond. You figured as much, but the threads still look messy, and you really wouldn't want to know just how much more tangling up you might've caused.

She looks at you, really looks at you, and you cannot help but shrink back in fear at her gaze. Who wouldn't? Her eyes have seen literally everything that was and will be, every single thought and word and action.

Her kind smile turns into something else you can't read as she tells you what you've always known since Yerim started carving out a Yerim-shaped hole in your chest but were too afraid to admit.

"You've grown too human," Haseul mutters. "That's unacceptable in our line of work, but alas! Some things just are, you know?"

You think she would know. She's Fate after all. And it's not like Haseul herself hasn't grown at least a little human, seeing the few human knickknacks strewn throughout the ice: a bow and an empty quiver, an ornately carved wooden chair with a poncho thrown over it. You think you saw a dove flit from the top of a column further down the hall.

"Am I getting fired, then?"

"Well... yes, but I'm nothing if not a good employer," the lady in red says, promptly handing you a piece of paper. You read the words Admit One (VIP). "That's your severance pay."

"My what?"

Haseul doesn't answer, merely poising the scissors over your black thread and leaving it there as she floats towards you, pulling you into a tight hug. "Goodbye Hyejoo. You've done well, and I wish you and Yerim the best on the other side."

The other side? So the ticket in your hand... Oh, Haseul.

"I think you could make do with some more organization, Haseul."

The lady in red laughs, loud and echoing in the hall of ice. A metallic snip, and you are no more.

  
...

  
Somewhere else:

Yerim wakes with the first ray of light that crosses the horizon. It's a new day, and she has a mission.

She stretches her arms above her head, yawning, one eye faintly glowing purple. Maybe today she'll visit a friend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hngggg i don't even know bout this one but i got tired of re-reading it so yeah. Titles of both chapters are lyrics from Run it up by Coast Modern, which partially inspired this fic.

**Author's Note:**

> I love my kids hyerim but this wouldn't let me sleep, hence this terrible fic exorcised from my brain. Please forgive me.


End file.
